sE Electronics is a microphone manufacturer founded in Shanghai in 2000 by Siwei Zou — a musician, conductor, composer, and bassoon player who studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music before being invited to California as a visiting scholar. During his time in the US, colleagues in Shanghai sent him newly developed microphones for testing and feedback, and his dissatisfaction with their design quality became the starting point for building something better. The name sE stands for Sound Engineering, and from the beginning the brand was built around treating the microphone as a musical instrument rather than a commodity.
What separates sE from the wider landscape of Chinese microphone manufacturers is a structural decision made in 2003 — the move to establish a fully dedicated in-house production facility in Shanghai, with sE's own design, engineering, and manufacturing teams controlling every step of the process. Unlike most brands that rely on OEM factories for capsules, housings, or electronics, sE builds everything under one roof and by hand, which gives them a level of consistency and quality control that is unusual at the price points they operate at. That commitment to in-house craftsmanship has been one of the defining characteristics of the brand ever since, and every microphone that leaves the factory — regardless of where it sits in the lineup — reflects the same attention to assembly detail.
The product range spans a wide spectrum: the sE2200 large-diaphragm condenser, which became one of the brand's signature mics partly through its use by Amy Winehouse, remains a standard in mic lockers worldwide. The V7 dynamic microphone earned a TEC Award and has found its way into live applications across genres. The Reflexion Filter, invented by sE in 2006, pioneered an entirely new product category — portable acoustic isolation for recording — and has since been copied by dozens of companies. At the higher end of the range, the collaboration with Rupert Neve Designs produced the RNR1 active ribbon microphone and the RNT tube condenser, co-designed with one of the most respected names in audio history. In 2008, Siwei passed the operational leadership of the company to his daughter Ling, who continues to run the brand today.
At Wired Tunes, we carry sE Electronics microphones for engineers and artists who want hand-built quality and musical sensitivity at every price point — from a first studio condenser to a reference-grade ribbon built in collaboration with a legend of the industry.
